


Go Their Own Ways

by panther



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther/pseuds/panther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three men. Three Paths. Three outcomes. Gellert stars his life thinking Muggles fear too much and he can help them by controlling them. Albus Dumbledore realises he made a mistake and spends his life trying to fix it. Harry Potters gets caught between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Their Own Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by 'Every villain is a hero in their own mind.'

Gellert grew up in a world where Muggles fought war after war for reasons that never made any sense to him. He grew up fearing the Muggles might changes their minds and go back to trying to burn people like him at the stake. He grew up in a world where people in his village muttered about vampires and hurried around with garlic necklaces around their necks. So much fear and for no reason. If they understood the world, all of it, maybe they could learn to stop fearing it so much. A simple an idea and not an evil one. Most things start simply though. The world then complicates them. 

School is the first step for Gellert. Quickly it becomes clear to him that he thinks differently from most, too differently. Eastern European witches and wizards like their system and they fear change. History classes nearly put Gellert to sleep but they inform him that nothing, in centuries, has really changed. People like him are called radicals and trouble makers. He turns to books to find out how to convince people, how to open themselves up to new ideas, and discovers magic of the mind. He decides that if those in power won't understand on their own then he will make him, and if that fails he will just have to get rid of them altogether. Before that though he learns to make sure his own mind cannot me manipulated in the same way. He studies furiously until his mind is impenetrable and for a while it keeps his teachers off his back. Casual skimming of the students' mind is common practice when the Dark Arts are being taught to children. Durmstrang is irresponsible perhaps but not entirely stupid in its teaching methods. 

His thirst for knowledge of this sort becomes too much for even Durmstrang and he finds himself expelled, thrown out of his home, and thinking perhaps it is the end of his particular road. Then he meets the Dumbledores' and everything changes. He finds someone who thinks just like him. His aunt Bathilda encourages him to spend most of his time with Albus, glad he has found friends. Perhaps she is also just glad to be rid of him. She didn't ask to be lumped with him after all, just didn't know how to say no. She had been a respected member of society and now she has an expelled nephew on her hands. Albus provides a soundboard to his ideas, clever enough to keep up and yet, not questioning him. Between his aunt's documents and books and Albus' knowledge Gellert learns of the wizarding world in Britain and starts to see an opportunity. They appear more open to change than their peers on the continent. Despite how useful to him Albus proves, Gellert genuinely feels he finally has a friend. They spend a lot of time discussing the famed Deathly Hallows and where they would start on their takeover. They also spend a lot of time wandering in the countryside and fishing in the rivers, sometimes taking Ariana along with them and summoning her butterflies before she attempts to do it herself. 

The trust the Dumbledore family put in him in regards to Ariana makes Gellert feel welcome and yet nervous. What happened to her is both what pushes Albus towards him and at the same time pulls him away. Albus talks more and more about protecting people but Gellert wants to control them. Controlling them _will_ protect them, he insists, but Albus becomes quiet and thoughtful the more they learn of the resurrection stone. 

It makes Gellert ask around the village about Albus, his mother and his father and he doesn't like what he hears. They don't sound like the sort of people who would support him. They sound far more like Aberforth who has never quite taken to him. It had been such a shock when the old man Dumbledore did what he did, they said. Never expected that of him, they said. He doesn't come across a single person that holds him responsible and yet it doesn't assure him. They don't see a fault with the system, the politics, the secrecy. No, they just blame the healers for not offering more support. They call the mother's death a tragedy and no one seems to blame the muggles at all. It is not that Gellert does. He sees the whole thing as a misunderstanding between magic and muggle and a prime example of why his revolution _needs_ to happen. No one would have died under his rules. He knows magic is dangerous and he knows people don't deserve to die because they don't have it but no one hears that. Very few listen the way he wants them to. 

Everyone seems to think that Ariana should have been more careful with her gifts and it enrages Gellert. Why should they have to hide something they were born with? They did not chose to have magic, just like muggles did not chose not to. School, his aunt, his friend, the village and later _that_ duel create the man Gellert becomes but after Voldemort few call him a monster. 

They just continue to fail to understand.   
*  
A thought Albus always has later is that while Gellert was cruel and single minded, at least he did not punish squibs for being born the way they are. He saw a place in the world for them. 'The greater good' is a phrase Albus uses after the war and Gellert during it and it is twisted by both in various ways. No villain thinks of themselves as such and Gellert is a prime example of that. Voldemort always revelled in his cruelty and used it has a threat to force those that may resist back into the shadows. Gellert was not like that. Gellert built his forces and dared his opponents to come to him. He does not kill because people disagree. He kills because people get in his way and sadly over time, that comes a positive in his favour. 

The memories of what he said to Gellert, what he thought, are a heavy weight on Albus' shoulders for the rest of his days. Sometimes he thinks 'but ah, I was only a child' but he knows that is now only an excuse when Harry Potter comes to Hogwarts and does so much. If he is honest he knows it during the first war with Voldemort when so many students commit themselves to the war effort before they have left the Castle and as soon as their graduation papers are in their hands, they arrive at his doors. He should have known better and it is to his eternal shame that he did not. If he could have seen Skeeter's book coming he would have felt he deserved it, offered her a lemon drop, and then retreated to a cottage in the country but it was not to be. War takes Albus, as it should. It is, after all, a war he helped create. Voldemort saw an example in Gellert and Gellert saw a possibility in Albus. Later, Albus cannot deny that or run from it, only face it and try his best to rectify his mistakes. 

He tries as long as he can to ignore what Gellert is doing but people always emigrate and more so after the muggle war in the 1910s. Children start to lose parents to Gellert because they stand in the way of his change. They won't pass those laws. They won't bring those topics up in their respective governments. 

Albus organises his classes and says nothing because the strategies Gellert is using are his. The words that appear in the newspapers around the world are his. He said them as a child in meadows, with short hair and a straight nose and a living sister. He said it before everything changed. 

He faces Gellert because people tell him he has to and his life becomes unbearable. His brother sends him a short letter, vicious even, telling him he has to end it. It is the first he has heard from Aberforth in decades. People hint that he started it. If he hadn't befriended him he might have drifted off into nothing but Albus doesn't believe that. He knows Gellert, loves him. He is too focused for that. Gellert would have found a way and Albus needs to find a way to stop him. 

The defeat comes and Albus watches sadly as Gellert is put in chains. He doesn't cackle, doesn't smile, just watches Albus in a way that hurts. If Gellert went mad Albus might cope but no, he is perfectly sane. He truly believed the murders were worth it. While Albus educated children Gellert murdered them. That is the difference between them. 

Or at least Albus tells himself that. Deep down he knows Gellert murdered children like those who hurt Ariana. And deeper than that Albus knows he himself might have ended his sister's life.  
*

Harry Potter is not a history fan but he found himself part of history either way. Being part of something and not understanding quite where it started leads him to study more vigorously than he ever did at school. While Ginny reads stories after the children go to bed he reads history books borrowed from Hermione, the Hogwarts library, and bought from Diagon Alley. Minerva feels she owes him so much so when he goes to her to ask where to start he opens the doors to him at once. It is not like students are falling over themselves to grab the history books themselves. 

He reads about Voldemort and thinks about everything Dumbledore ever told him. Everything he reads feels like madness and it terrifies him that so many followed him. He knows that for many it was fear but he also knows that for plenty of others they really did believe. Then he reads about Gellert and about Albus and he wants to deny everything. He wants to think better of his mentor but he remembers too many things. He remembers manipulation and gentle smiles and lemon drop sweets. He remembers too many things to let it all go. 

Albus Dumbledore raised Harry Potter like a pig to slaughter because he saw a war that was partially his own creation. Maybe Gellert would never have been if he hadn't found the mind of Albus Dumbledore. Maybe he would have been talked into a different route if he didn't find the past Albus had. Maybe a lot of things would have been different but Harry can't know that for sure. Harry can't live like that. Not when so many already have the 'what ifs' around his own survival as a child. A lot of people want to talk to him after the war. He shoves most of them away but he can't get rid of them all. Some worm their way through and they talk about all the things that Harry could have done, all the paths he could have walked down. Another path and people might be questioning him about different things. He questions himself and thinks he could do better. Every hero thinks themselves a villain in some way and every villain thinks themselves a hero in another. Harry is not sure what he is other than what he has always been, just Harry. His research brings him no comfort. It does however, bring him some answers.


End file.
